I have a friend who has cancer. She's already been in hospice once. It's disconcerting to think someone my age could die...not in a car accident, but of a disease, of a body giving out. My best friend went through this a few years ago when a friend of hers from high school died of bone cancer at age 34. We still think we're immortal in our hearts, that we're 18 or 22 with everything ahead of us.
I haven't talked to her for a few months, but she popped up in a dream last night.
In the dream, I was going to go visit her. But she wasn't home, she was in a hospital room. Room 118 to be exact. Except this this room wasn't in a hospital. It was...
detached... somehow. I can show you on a map where in town it was, although the streets I took to get there don't really exist and neither does the place where it was. I finally found the place, and there were two rooms there, not just one. Room 117 was there too, right next door. Imagine a very small concrete shed or shack, barely wider than the door, and only a few feet deep. That's what these "rooms" looked like from the outside. They were separated by about 10 feet, on a plot of land that needed serious lawn care. I parked my car (gravel driveway) and went to 118. When I opened the (unlocked) door, there was no room inside, just a concrete stairway leading down, very much like an exterior basement entrance. The stairwell was about 1/3 full of crinkly fall leaves and crumpled paper 8 1/2 by 11, not newspaper). Neither of those things weigh very much and it was easy for me to push them aside and get to the lower door, which wasn't numbered. I knocked and went in.
The room inside was also made of concrete. The lighting was low and dim. It did not look like a hospital room. It looked like someone living in a basement, in a one-room apartment. The walls were lined with bookshelves stuffed with books. My friend was sitting on the couch with her back to me. She did not seem to want to see me, and seemed rather surprised I'd made the effort. I said something about the leaves in the stairwell and she waved her hand a little and said she'd have it taken care of. I felt very awkward--not because she was sick, but because I was clearly an unwanted guest. I finally asked if she was going to be able to go home and she snapped, clearly irritated, "I'm working on it."
With that, I left, and realized that when I said "home" I wasn't sure if I meant "Home" (meaning heaven or the other side of the veil or the afterlife, however you envision it) or "home" like back to where she lived. When I got upstairs, a bulldozer had just finished knocking down room 117. I marveled that we hadn't heard it from underground, and wondered it meant that the room was gone. Had the patient gone Home or gone home?
Then I went to do a bunch of other things that didn't really seem related. I was bringing my old Body Shop stuff to a party, but I was late because I couldn't merge into the correct lane and had to around in a big loop and waste a bunch of time. Then I realized I was supposed to be bringing my mom but going back for her would make me even later. I called her and she was angry at me, but understanding. When I got to the house where the party was, a bunch of old ladies wanted me to play cards. I pulled a regular deck (52 cards) out of my purse (why I had cards in my purse I couldn't tell you) but they said we had to play with their deck. It was a big fat deck and made up of regular cards, tarot cards and some other kinds of cards based on places, almost like the location cards in Mythos (the Call of Cthulhu trading card game). The smaller cards had been laminated and cut to be the same size. We were supposed to "sell" the cards in our hands to the other players. I had a blue-inked New York City card and I tried to sell it to the lady on my left for 500 (500 what? I don't know. Points? Pennies?) and she said that was too much so I changed it to 50 and she offered me 30 and I realized I had no clue how to play this stupid game.
Then my ex-boyfriend wanted to see me. I didn't want to see him but I went and picked him up anyway. I was driving my 1981 Chevy Chevette--it was light blue with a white stripe--and my body shop bags were in the back seat. He kept saying how much room there was in the back (not true!) and I had the awful feeling he wanted to have sex with me. So I told him I wasn't on any birth control which had the opposite effect. I got away from him and went home but I felt as dirty as if I HAD slept with him, so I took a shower.The next day I decided to go see my friend again. The stairwell was completely full of leaves and papers this time. I scooped them out with my hands until I could get down to the door. She was playing World of Warcraft and one of my husband's friends (who doesn't play WoW) was there. They were talking about how there was a Dungeons and Dragons expansion for World of Warcraft. I said I had seen the ad for it in Dragon magazine.
They both looked at me like "what the hell are YOU doing here" but I didn't leave. I outstayed my welcome. My friend asked me if I could type her spell list for her. She gave me a bunch of very messy hand-written pages with all kinds of strange words and numbers separated by slashes and hyphens, a kind of shorthand which I don't speak. I didn't want to do it, but I said I would. She said she needed the original back in a few hours, or else the finished copy. I said I'd try to find a copy machine or fax machine at the hospital and they both looked at me strangely--hospital? What hospital? I left with the pages and I can't remember anything else.
Basically that's it.
Car picture source
Some of it seems pretty straightforward.
- Going under the ground, that's a classic shamanic image for visiting the "underworld" and clearly my friend represents some part of my unconscious which is hiding from me...or that is "dying" because of all the work I've been doing on my self (or both--hiding from me because I'm killing it).
- Fall leaves are a death symbol, but like all death symbols have that hint of rebirth about them. The crumpled papers all had writing on them--discarded thoughts? Thoughtforms?
- World of Warcraft--my husband plays it all the time and I'm basically a "WoW Widow" because that's ALL he does at night and on weekends. So it takes my husband away and now it's taking my friend away...except that she represents an aspect of my SELF so how does that work?
- My old car does go back to the time of that ex-boyfriend. He emailed me recently so that could be why he came up. I have NO desire to have sex with him. He is married and going bald and still a jerk, I presume.
- Lugging around the bags of Body Shop stuff--that's a failed endeavor which is still haunting me in real life, and I still have the bags of stuff around because I paid for it all and I'm going to use it up. I hate failing.
- The basement room was full of books--that's knowledge, but because it was in this basement, it's hidden knowledge. And my friend (aspect) didn't want me there, so I'm not supposed to see it/not allowed to see it? Don't know how to see it?
- The old ladies and the cards--no clue what that could mean. They wouldn't let me play with the familiar deck, that's getting me out of my comfort zone and challenging me in some way.
- Getting on the wrong highway because I couldn't merge--that's victim consciousness, it's not my fault, someone did it TO me.
- The hospital room being detached from the hospital--I can see that it's rich with symbolism but can't figure out WHAT it means.
- The other room being destroyed--a symbol of another part of my unconscious being destroyed? Re-absorbed? It felt more hopeful than sorrowful.
- The "spell list" is knowledge my aspect has that I don't. She was giving me a short time to make a legible copy but I couldn't seem to manage it, or didn't want to.
- The friend of my husband's being there--my friend and his friend probably know each other as we all went to the same high school, but why he'd be there I don't know. And I can't imagine what he symbolizes in my unconsciousness.
Any outside thoughts welcome.
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